Hussein El-Yassih: Victim details constant reminders of sexual violation as HR boss awaits sentence

A woman sexually violated by a western Sydney HR boss has detailed how she struggles to find “the will to live” as she battles to overcome the constant reminders of his attacks.

HR boss Hussein El-Yassih.

A woman sexually violated by a western Sydney HR boss has detailed how she struggles to find “the will to live” as she battles to overcome the constant reminders of attacks that have left her with “deep scars”.

She wrote of the “traumatic experiences” and the “heavy toll” they have taken on her, mentally and physically, in a victim impact statement read to the Sydney District Court on Thursday.

The statement was read to the court on her behalf as her assailant Hussein El-Yassih, of Greystanes, faced a sentence hearing via video link in his prison greens.

El-Yassih, 32, stood trial earlier this year and was found guilty of three counts of aggravated sexual touching and one count of carrying out an aggravated sexual act with another, after he pinned the woman against a wall while masturbating.

He had pleaded not guilty to all charges laid against him, and was ultimately acquitted by a jury of a number of sexual assault allegations.

The Sydney District Court. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Nikki Short

In July, when El-Yassih was remanded in custody, the court heard the charges he was found guilty of involved the same woman and that the offences had occurred on two separate days in 2021.

In her victim impact statement, read aloud on Wednesday, the woman wrote that she was still “trying to comprehend” what she endured.

“(I am) struggling with … shame and self-blame,” the woman wrote.

She also outlined her “recurring nightmares and flashbacks”, saying she would have to live with the trauma for the rest of her life.

Judge Jane Culver previously detailed the woman’s evidence, with the first incident involving El-Yassih “trying to pull (the victim)” into a fire escape at a Sydney CBD building.

Judge Culver continued saying there was a “sense of persistence and struggle” by the offender, and it wasn’t “just a fleeting sexual touching”.

“He was trying to kiss my neck, pull up on my skirt and just feed me compliments,” Judge Culver said when detailing the woman’s evidence.

Later that day, Judge Culver said the woman explained how El-Yassih “kept trying to be … sexual with me (and) kept pressuring me to get a room”, which she rejected.

El-Yassih tried to get his hand “up under” the woman’s skirt and pressed his penis on the woman from behind.

The court heard that days later, he pinned the woman against a wall and tried to unbuckle her pants while telling her to “be quiet” and “be a good little girl”.

“He was masturbating … begging her for a few more seconds … then ejaculated all over the wall next to her,” Judge Culver said.

El-Yassih’s barrister, April Francis, told the court on Thursday about the ongoing stress the matter had caused his “immigrant parents”.

She conceded her client had been “enamoured” with the woman.

Ms Francis later told the court El-Yassih’s offending was “something different from the (usual) sexual predator who engages in this sort of behaviour”.

Judge Culver is expected to sentence El-Yassih later this month.